pity someone else

Tj Churchill

Why does life favour certain people over others? Usually the people who lose out on things were the more deserving in the first place.

My nephew TJ posted this question on Face book today and it provoked me to wonder just who is favored by Fortune?

The picture above is of four of my nephews and my Father. My Father spends much of his day sleeping, as the pain caused by widespread arthritis has finally exhausted even his great reservoir of strength. So to get the picture I had requested for Christmas my young nephew TJ creatively decided that if Mohamed couldn't come to the mountain then the mountain was going to come to him!

My dad brought 5 children into this world, raised them with dignity and honor and then took a sixth in when that young man needed a home as a teenager. We are all grown up and have spread our wings and made our way in life. The fact he has four grandsons in his bed and that they represent less than a quarter of his grandchildren says he had some success.

 

There are those who would feel pity for my Father, who might be tempted to say he got dealt a shitty hand. But he lived his life displaying a strength of character and honor that I've seldom seen equaled and never seen bettered. He and my Mother gave me and my siblings the gift of Character, a strong work ethic, and the capacity to face adversity that have combined to give us the resources to survive and thrive in a hard world.   

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
-- Boris Pasternak

 

There is an illusion in today's world that we ought to feel only pity and perhaps a measure of contempt for those who have known hardship or who have fallen or stumbled along Life's road. I hold to my Father's wisdom that rarely trusted in those who had never felt the blow or had never had to find the courage to stand up after adversity had knocked them down.

 

My answer to my nephew's question was to remind him that we have to wait until the end to discover who was truly favored. My old man has had a hard life by most people's standards. But I won't be surprised if at the end when life is measured in the scales of worthiness and blesisng, the measure of his life's value will far out-weigh many we think were more privileged and pampered.